As the Supreme Court ponders the legality of restrictions President Trump is attempting to impose on “birthright citizenship” in the United States (expect a decision the day the justices leave town for the summer), one unique royal birth at an Ottawa hospital in the depths of World War II offers an exception to the jus soli laws in our neighbor to the north, which mirror our own. The question is whether it could be replicated in this country should the High Court not rule in the administration’s favor.
The Flight of the Dutch Royal Family
At the outset of the Second World War in September 1939, the Dutch government chose a principle of strict neutrality in the conflict, but as the Anne Frank House explains:
On 10 May 1940, the German army invaded the Netherlands. It was the start of five days of fighting that resulted in the occupation of the Netherlands.
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The planned attack on the Netherlands was part of a larger plan of attack, of which the code name was Fall Gelb. The goal of the Germans was to conquer France. They wanted to bypass the French defence line at the eastern border by going through the Netherlands and Belgium. Their occupation of the Netherlands would also prevent England from setting up a base of operations on the European mainland.
Unlike her neighbor, Leopold III, king of the Belgians (who fought the German invasion of his country, surrendered, and remained in Brussels for the rest of the war until the Nazis spirited him off to Austria, triggering a “postwar conflict”), Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, her ministers, and family left the Netherlands and went to England.
From there, her daughter and heir, Princess Juliana, took refuge in Canada, where she lived in Ottawa at Stornoway, now the official residence of the Canadian leader of the opposition.
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